Trump not ruling out Independent presidential bid

[SteveRogers]

The republican party needs to grow a spine and make him sign an official agreement that if he wants to be on the ballot for the Republican primaries he must agree not to run as an Independent. If he doesnt agree make him run as independent from now instead of later.

That's not really a thing. There's no real way to make signing a legally enforceable contract of that sort a prerequisite to running. There's sore loser laws and filing deadlines that kick in to stop him from making the switch if he waits too long, but that's about it.

I think we have to ask ourselves as a nation if we want a President who can't be loyal to his/her political party. If we can't trust Donald Trump to be loyal to the Republican Party, how can we expect him to be loyal to the country? He claims he's "loyal to a fault" but look at his marriages, look at how he is treating people who he previously supported - namely Rand Paul - in this campaign. Now this.

Look, I'm no Trump fan, but loyalty to country obviously comes before loyalty to a political party. Think about what you just said.

[SteveRogers]

Didn't somebody research this, and conclude it would be impracticable for Trump to get on the ballot as a third party candidate in most places, if he decides next Spring that securing the Pub nomination is impracticable for him?

I think the filing deadlines for independents would start kicking in in early March (if there's deadlines for independent candidates earlier than that, there's Supreme Court precedent to challenge them as unconstitutional). But as a practical matter that means you'd ideally want petition drives going on in a number of states earlier than that. Plus you start running into sore loser laws, so by Super Tuesday you've already got problems in IA, NH, SC, NV, etc. Waiting until after Super Tuesday is almost certainly too late. Could Trump drop out immediately after new New Hampshire and still get on the ballot in most of the country as an independent? Theoretically yes, but it would cost an exorbitant amount of money.